10 April 2018
The Internal Market Information System (IMI) celebrates its 10th anniversary. This multilingual network created in 2008 by the European Commission in cooperation with Member States is meant to ease the information exchange among national authorities responsible for the implementation of the EU legislation. On 10th April 2018 Brussels hosted an event to celebrate the anniversary and to assess these first 10 years of activity.
Some data
Since 2008 the IMI system has strongly developed: it connects nowadays almost 8,000 public authorities across Europe and during the last 6 months 3,100 officials have made use of it (10,000 since 2016).
Information exchanges amounted to more than 114,000 and the average number of information requests per month grew from 30 in 2008 to more than 1,200 in 2017. Before the end of 2018, IMI will be active in 14 sectoral policies.
The European Professional Card created in 2016 is one of the best examples of the IMI great success: the Card aims at accelerating the recognition of professional qualifications and is the very first completely online procedure at European level.
IMI in Italy
Each Member State has an IMI national coordinator. In Italy the Department for European Policies and precisely its Directorate General Single Market and Competitiveness ensures the task.
In 2017 the Italian IMI network – including so far 257 accredited competent authorities – has registered 15,384 exchanged data (face to 1,446 in 2014).
The Single Market Evaluation Framework (click here for the Italian version), annually published by the European Commission, states that Italy’s performance has been at the forefront since 2015.
The satisfaction rate related to the services provided by the Italian IMI system amounts to 92%, thus exceeding the European average (88%).
Conference in Brussels
The “Internal Market Information System (IMI) – 10th Anniversary event” took place in Brussels on 10th April 2018 with the participation of a delegation from the Department for European Policies.
The conference was introduced by Elżbieta Bieńkowska, EU Commissioner for Internal Market, industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs, and closed by Michel Barnier, EU Chief Negotiator for the conduct of the Negotiations with the United Kingdom after Brexit and former European Commissioner in charge of Internal Market.
Event available in streaming on the European Commission website.
Find below IMI best achievements in 10-year activity.
